Stephen Hawkins Says Idea of Afterlife a "fairy tale"

First would be to assume we already understand all there is to know regarding the universe.
Second would be the claim such a large event would still be bound by such laws.
Third would be the concept that there is something (or nothing) beyond our universe which is filled by our universe (zero proof of this).
Lastly is the silly notion that it's the only possibility (again to claim that we are already aware of all that is).

Would you not agree that so many assumptions are just as fantastical as the belief that there is a being so vast and powerful that it can create humanity or that once we pass from this consciousness the energy that is released upon death still carries our consciousness within it or that energy is reunited with the earth itself?

That's a lie. Nothing is actually observable regarding the big bang. Nothing. They look for evidence to support the theory and nothing more. In regards to the big bang, what portion of the theory is rejected or modified?

My point isn't that religion is right, it's that we don't know a (*)(*)(*)(*) thing regarding the big bang or the beginning of the universe. It's all speculation based on zero evidence. There is not one ounce of real evidence that is verifiable to support the theory of a big bang, only speculation.

 

Occam's Razor is simply and unavoidably true. And the perception that the world was flat did not arise from anything vaguely resembling an application of Occam's Razor... but instead from incurious disinterest. In spite of modern mythology, those who paid attention have been aware of the spheriticy of the earth since ancient times. Eratosthenese even measured its diameter with surprising accuracy.

And anyone who believes for a second that the Copernican Model was not a validation of Occam's razor has never spent a second trying to understand the cycles and epicycles of pre-Copernican Cosmology. It was specifically its vastly greater simplicity that convinced Galileo that the Copernican system was correct.

I gotta say... your command of the history is not very impressive.

First and foremost, it's not a tablet. It's the secondary impression of a cylindrical clay seal.

But yes.... it is eleven (not ten) dots surrounding a much larger central star... assuming you don't count the 12th object to the right of the figure's head. And the most obvious explanation is that it portrays exactly what anybody would have seen looking at the night sky during a nova. There is no good reason to suspect that instead it is some sort of reference to advanced astronomical information regarding the non-visible solar system... especially since it does not coincide with what we actually know about that solar system.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

There is nothing outrageous about dismissing extraordinary claims for which there is no evidence. Especially when cosmology is so important a part of ancient tradition. Do you honestly believe that if the Akkadians had advanced knowledge about the non-visible solar system, the only place it would have left a trace is in a single tiny cylindrical seal?

You yourself have acknowledged that until the 18th century, we only knew of the same 6 planets familiar to the ancient Greeks and Romans. And yet... even the cave men would have noticed a supernova.

It is especially reasonable to reject your interpretation since we actually have a vast amount of cuneiform information on Akkadian/Sumerian cosmology. How do you reconcile your interpretation of that one seal with the actual tablets that tell us of a universe contained by a closed dome surrounded by a primordial saltwater sea? Beneath the flat earth was the underworld and a freshwater ocean called the Apsu. The god of the heavens was An. The earth was named Ki. The primordial saltwater sea was called Nammu, or later Tiamat.

How exactly do you explain your ideas and theirs at the same time?

 

The genuine controversy is not whether or not aliens exist, but whether or not the universe is old enough for them to have found us here.

It almost certainly is not.

The universe may be teaming with intelligent life. But we are still likely to become extinct before we have met any biology other than the terrestrial one.

 

Sigh..marry me. Please.

 

Occam's razor is a fallacy. Explanations justified by it are proven false all the time, and it is in fact often a consequence of what you call "incurious disinterest." Regarding the Copernican model, I think most primitive European cultures would think you crazy (maybe canibalize you or something) for even suggesting that earth wasn't flat as that was the ultimate era of naive empiricism.

So now they have a flat earth, yet they were able to observe another star out there with circular planets that orbited around it, yet couldn't figure out the very earth they were on wasn't revolving around that other very big light bearing thing in the sky....Wouldn't that depiction describing their solar system seem so much more sensible?

Because it's cuneiform and linguistic reconstruction of a non-Proto IndoEuro, Non-Semetic language isolate whose "lexicon" is complete arbitration. It's a group of "scientists" with a handful of pre-conceive ideas about the univerrse and the order of things taking a civilization they didn't even know existed until...was it the 19th century, early 20th....trying to make a mysterious text without an established lexicon conform in someway with their worldview with almost nothing to compare it to. Why would anyone take that at face value? I mean, for Egyption Hieroglyphics, they had the Rosetta stone.

Now compare that uncertainty with the Berlin seal, compare that with Mayan astrology, compare that with the fact they both built pyramid like structures, the fact we have a new comet with a 2600-3600 year orbit, the fact that the Mayans have a 2600-3600 cyclical calender, compare that with the fact that we may be in a binary star system (which could easilly explain the Sumerians being able to observe more than 6 or even 9 planets), compare that with the fact goverments lie and would certainly conceal this information from us if they knew anyway, and boom, what the (*)(*)(*)(*) do we know about anything? Boom, says who there isn't a tenth planet?

My only point is the model you accept, if you truly believe in the possibility of a binary system (and the majority of stars are in fact binary stars), has no more plausibility than the Sumerian or Mayan sans our relative empirical analysis, which is not very convincing. And with my distrust of goverment and my trust in that we like to disregard what challenges the common worldview (and evidence to affirm the contrary), I trust there's something missing that will definitively alter the paradigm.

 

Nonsense.

That would be the singe most unscientific attitude imaginable. If we already understood everything, there would be no point to science at all. Its very rationale is to uncover what we acknowledge we do not know.

Either it is or it is not. We have a vast amount of evidence for a universe (a rather big event in and of itself, I might point out) that is bound by such laws, and no evidence whatsoever of anything that is not.

The laws of causality and conservation are empirically derived. I would be happy to consider them as mere special cases... if you provided an empirical reason for doing so. But until you do, we have nothing else to reason from. And reasoning from what we have, we can draw no other conclusion than the one I have already offered.

I'm not even certain of what you're trying to say there. But first off, if you want to speak scientifically, you probably should avoid such a cavalier use of the word "proof." Outside of mathematics and inductive logic, there's really no such thing in science.

What I have been saying certainly does not require there to be anything other than this single instance of universe that we experience. While a discussion of multiverse's is both interesting and profitable, it has nothing directly to do with what I've been talking about.

And discussions of "nothing" are pretty much just pointless.

Possibilities are constrained by definition. They must first be possible, and exclude those things that are impossible. If the laws of causality and conservation are true, we know that a Big Bang ex nihilo is not possible. This is actually something on which both theists and atheists agree.

The disagreement is over what it was that preceded the Big Bang.

"Fantastical assumptions" are something I try very hard to avoid. Since the only tools we have for learning anything are evidence and reason, I try to exercise a certain humility and start with the evidence and reason from there. My only foundational assumption is that I can generally trust my senses to give me information about an objective reality that is independent of my personal hopes or desires.

That assumption has served me pretty well

Nonsense. We directly observe the Big Bang every time we look up at the night sky. In case you were unaware, it is still going on.

And as to "what portion of the theory is rejected or modified," it would probably be easier to answer what part is not. The field of cosmology is vastly exciting right now. However... all of them have to somehow explain the currently observed red shift, and so all of them ultimately become competing explanations for a Big Bang event that has no current alternative.

And my point is that religion is irrelevant. It has nothing to tell us about objective reality. Religion discovers no new species or new celestial objects. It cures no diseases, it feeds no starving people, it sends no men to the moon or submarines to the sea floor or tourists to Europe.

But it is also an absurd falsehood to insist that we do not or cannot know anything about the Big Bang. How is that different from knowing something about life on earth 160 million years ago, or something about Julius Caesar 2000 years ago, or something about Newt Gingrich yesterday?

Because the Big Bang is not "the beginning of the universe." If the laws of conservation and causality are true, there can be no beginning to the universe.

It is among that list of "impossible" things.

 

If string theory gets proved, the physics community will be so clueless they won't even worry about the speed of light.

 

Words of wisdom .... thank you.

 

I don't think you know what a "fallacy" is, because there is no conceivable way that Occam's Razor can qualify. It is merely a general recommendation to prefer the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions, when the hypotheses are equal in other respects.

It can even be wrong.

But to pretend (as you do) that it is a bad thing is to embrace the darkness.

You have swallowed the "flat earth myth" hook line and sinker. It is a convenient tale. It bears little resemblance to real history.

For example, when Columbus sailed west to get east, his unique idea was not that the earth was spherical, but that the globe was much smaller than most other people thought. He was wrong of course, but luckily there was another continent in the way.

It requires them to have observed something there is no evidence they observed, and that there is no obvious way to have made such an observation possible.

So no. It is really not sensible at all.

I have read that sentence no less than ten times and I can make neither heads not tales of it. If you are saying that we really can't translate Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform, you would be simply wrong. We can.

And this is because we actually do have a "Rosetta Stone" for Akkadian too. It is called the Behistun inscription, and it is a trilingual cuneiform inscription written in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian.

Wow. Just Wow. There's a whole lotta very eccentric "dot connecting" going on in that paragraph.

But none of it makes obvious sense and many of the dots are not even true. The Mayans did not have "a 2600-3600 cyclical calendar." There are countless comets and all of them have different orbits. The "binary star system" is still a pure speculation and if any of this stuff was ever "discovered," it would be by academic scientists and not the government (liars or otherwise).

Look.... it's one thing to have an open mind. It's another thing entirely to let your brains fall out on the floor. I am not sure what set you off... but that seal?

It's almost certainly just a nova in an otherwise ordinary field of stars.

 

Just using common sense, something that a few seem to lack here.

 

You mean other than the physics community that would have proved it.

Right?

 

I don't fear dying at all. I welcome it. Hell. I fear living in these days more than death.

Oh, and I believe in an afterlife.


He might have me on being afraid of the dark tho.

 

Who's Stephen Hawkins?

 

SOURCE??? please

 

Seriously? The hottest research area in Cosmology is "what came before the Big Bang" and you are asking for "a source?" Here's a good one that should make the point pretty understandable out of the gate.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGx3UB-Slg"]YouTube - ‪BBC Horizon 2010: 1/6 What Happened Before the Big Bang‬‏[/ame]

But if you think about it, you don't need a source. You only need to think.

If the laws of causality and conservation are true (and if you think they're not, I'd love to see your evidence) there must have been something before the Big Bang.

Ex nihilo, nihil fit.

 

Something might have altered your attitudes. Why would you automatically ascribe those changes to a god? Are we not capable of adapting without the need for qualifying a change with a mythical being as the cause?

What would you say if you one day discovered that the Earth had been seeded by alien beings as an experiment, and we were the product of that experiment? Where would your god and bible be then?

 

Stephen Hawkinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

 

I would say that it doesn't disprove God, but it does explain a lot of descriptions in the Bible.

 

Disproving just what? I'm not a religious type....but I try to keep an open mind. So, for sake of argument; Whose to say that the aliens that seeded the earth didn't believe in their own version of a God? And that what they did was ordained by he/she/it? Maybe their "bible" demands that they go forth, into the universe, and seed the planets they found. Be skeptical...but don't plant your feet in concrete.

 

A fallacy is an argument used to prove a logical assertion on a faulty or supericial premeses. Occam's Razor most certainly is one. For example, earth seems flat, therefore it must BE flat because of Occam's razor. IT's just a fallacy that scientists don't like to admit because it's an excuse for them to explain what they can't or don't want to explain.

So tell me then, did the Etruscans think the world was round?

It does require them observng something, but just because you claim there is no evidence they observed something does not give you the justification to say they didn't; furthermore, when evidence such as a binary star system conjecture and a new comet with a historically referenced orbit, it should prompt further inquiry.

What's not to get? It's a language without relatives and linguists arbitrarilly reconstructing it to fit with their worldview and what they conceive as possible (ruling out the "impossible"). Why trust their arbitrary translation more than the actual drawing?

Are you saying the Mayan's didn't have a calender with a long and a short count? That's just not true. Furthermore, it is speculation but it's also just common sense. http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980402c.html. A convincing majority of stars are in fact binary stars. As far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof should be on YOU to prove that we're not in a binary star system.

Of course goverment would discover it, all the research institutes with the best technology are either .gov or belong to the govs of other countries. Of course it would be goverment leading the research...NASA?

 

What exactly is it that the Mayans knew about Neptune and Pluto?

 

And what is really wrong with accepting the idea that the Universe and all life forms and all that we know and don't yet know...is simply based in physics and evolution? Why is it so horrible to accept the idea of 'here today and gone tomorrow'? Why must people FABRICATE all sorts of ideology and dogma when these same people have zero evidence to support their positions?

 

Nonsense.

"Earth seems flat, therefore it must BE flat," is not an application of Occam's razor. It is simply an error that later observations corrected... often through the application of Occam's Razor.

And I have to tell you... scientists are all about explanation. I have no idea what weird group you've encountered looking for excuses to not explain stuff. Generally such people do not survive very long in the pursuit of science.

Since they were a pre-scientific people, who cares?

A conjecture is not evidence. It is (hopefully) the starting point for pursuing evidence with which to test it. The "Nemesis" conjecture was inspired by a Jack Sepkoski (personal friend of mine!) and Dave Raup's paper in the 1980s claiming a periodic pattern of mass extinctions. The reason people started looking for a cosmic explanation though was because the pattern was IIRC 26 million years. Not the historic time frames that you're talking about.

And I have no idea why you're still going on about "new comets." Comets are not stars, there are countless numbers of them, they change their orbits (and orbital periods) every time they pass close to a major planet and they have periods all over the map.

And I gotta tell you, the sentence, " just because you claim there is no evidence they observed something does not give you the justification to say they didn't" is so vacuous that it borders on parody. I also claim that there is no evidence that Julius Caesar invaded Tasmania, but my conviction that he did not do so hardly depends merely on their being no evidence for such an invasion.

Because their translation is not arbitrary, and the drawing is hardly unambiguous.

No. I'm not. I'm saying that they did not have "a 2600-3600 cyclical calendar."

Their short count was 13 K'atun (256.3 years) and their long count was 20 K'atun (394.3 years).

Why would I want to prove that?

Ignoring that the best research institutes in this country are all .edu, what possible reason would the Government have for concealing a binary star that won't come close for another 11 million years?

 

Who is stephen hawkins?